


Cats In The Bag

by volunteerfd



Category: Cats (2019), Secret History - Donna Tartt
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Drug Use, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-05
Updated: 2020-03-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:49:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23030455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/volunteerfd/pseuds/volunteerfd
Summary: Bunny convinces, coerces, blackmails—whatever you want to call it—the group into seeing Cats (2019). Richard has a bad trip.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 62





	Cats In The Bag

**Author's Note:**

> A fic that only I could write, and probably read.
> 
> As always, thank you to heyjupiter.
> 
> You might assume I’m Richard in this, but actually I’m Bunny (and maybe Francis).

We had a wholly deserved reputation for barricading ourselves in a tall ivory tower, protected from popular culture by a moat. If we ever talked about “memes,” it was the original Greek sense of the word-- _mīmēma,_ an imitated thing. Blockbuster films came and went without our notice or interest; other than Bunny, I was the only one who recognized Robert Downey Jr., and only from a vague memory of watching _Less Than Zero_ in high school. 

When some outside knowledge did slip into our fortress, it could usually be traced back to Bunny. He always brought the worst possible examples of modern culture, like bubonic plague carried aboard by a rat: quoting entire scenes from Adam Sandler movies, describing a superhero flick in agonizing detail, singing the latest Billboard chart-topper loudly (and badly). He often joked about going to a concert or a movie together, as if the image of Henry watching sitting in a cramped, sticky-floored theater surrounded by the mindless _hoi polloi_ and watching mass-produced commercial schlock was too hilarious to pass up.

We took it for what it was: low-hanging fruit about how remote and reserved we were, how discordant it would be to see us in a stadium surrounded by flash strobe lights and potheads in band t-shirts.

But _Cats_ seemed different. He wasn’t content with the comedic fantasy. He was stuck on making the real thing happen. For weeks, we thought he was beating a joke to death, which wouldn’t have been the first time. But he simply did not let up, and his tone became heavier, darker. 

We were in the country house, lounging in the living room and trying to prepare for the upcoming semester—ideally in silence, but Bunny had other ideas.

“Why don’t we all go together? It’ll be a fun experience.”

“Fun for whom?” Francis asked. 

“Oh, come on, Francis, surely _you_ like _Cats_.”

“I abhor _Cats,_ I’ll have you know. It’s trash. It’s—garbage,” Francis’ hand fluttered to his pocket for a cigarette. “And I bet the movie is even worse.”

“What about you, Henry? You’re always going on about how ugly things are grand, and there’s nothing uglier or grander than this. I thought you were a man of, what d’you call them, your principles.” 

Other than a vein popping out of his forehead and an unusual pallor, Henry remained stoic. But there was a strange tension in the air as if questioning Henry’s principles was a bridge too far.

“If it’s all the same to you, Bun,” Charles said, “I’d prefer to sit this one out.”

“But it’s been so long since we did anything together. You know, as a group. You and me and Henry and the twins...”

“And me,” I added, a contribution that went unacknowledged.

“But Bunny,” Camilla said gently, “you hate musicals.” 

“I hate the ones that are, you know,” Bunny said, gesturing vaguely at Francis, “ _maudlin._ But the good ones? The ones with a little glitz and glam and pizzazz? Sir Andrew Lloyd. There’s a man who knows how to write musicals.” 

Francis bristled but didn’t say anything. 

“Besides,” Bunny continued, “it’ll be fun. Have you ever done anything just for some good _harmless_ fun?” 

I didn’t know much about _Cats,_ only that it was legendarily bad and the effects in the movie were said to be terrifying. Hampden students were already adopting it as a new post-post-post-ironic campy ritual. In California, I’d attended a couple of midnight screenings of _Rocky Horror_. Though I hated both the experience and the movie, it was nice to let loose for a couple of hours and be a loathsome jackass lost in a vast sea of even more loathsome jackasses. Once I left California, I filed the experience away under gauche high school idiocy and vowed never to repeat it. 

I couldn’t imagine anyone else in the group at a screening of _Rocky Horror_ under any circumstance, but there was something alluring about Camilla reenacting the loss of virginity with squeals of camp ecstasy or repressed Henry dancing around in fishnets and heels. What would the group be like without their inhibitions?

The unidentified tension sparked and sizzled. “If you don’t want to see _Cats,”_ Bunny continued after a long silence, “I suppose we can go to _Death of a Farmer.”_

“Don’t you mean _Death of a Salesman_?” I asked.

“No. I mean _Death of a Farmer._ Kind of a quiet little underground thing right now, but I expect it’ll be all the buzz in a few months…”

_Death of a Farmer_ must have been even less appealing than _Cats,_ because Henry spoke immediately: “Does Friday work for everyone?”

* * *

Before that, I had no interest in seeing _Cats_ , of course, nor did I care about being left out of a group venture, but Bunny seemed insistent that we all see it together, so I canceled a casual Tinder hookup. She was an unpromising prospect, anyway. I had told Dr. Roland I’d work Saturday for some extra money so I left a message calling in sick, though I doubted whether he’d remember when I was supposed to work, or how to check his messages.

The night of the movie, I stopped by Judy’s for a tab of acid. She was excited when I told her what I needed it for, said I was in for “a real treat,” regaled me with stories from her childhood watching the PBS recording. “...That’s when I knew I wanted to be a dancer. Not because of Victoria,” she clarified sharply, “but because of Bombalurina,” or at least that’s what it sounded like. Her words washed over me. I wished I was already high. 

She bustled around, throwing socks from her drawer onto the bed, looking for her stash. Of course she’d be the type of girl who went to midnight screenings of Rocky Horror. She probably still did.

“Oh, here it is.” From under a pair of handcuffs and a pile of colorful lace panties, she pulled out a plastic bag and handed it to me.

“Thanks.”

“Anyway, have a blast! Oh, and by the way, I’m so glad you’re doing something without that Greek group. I know they’re your friends, but…”

* * *

We piled into Henry’s car. He insisted on going to a theater several towns over so as not to run into anyone we knew. “If I’m caught dead seeing this film,” he had said, with a warning glare at Bunny, “it better not follow me to campus.” 

The mood was funereal. As far as I could tell, Henry was stone-cold sober, which seemed like a bad choice. Then again, seeing it on acid might also prove to be a mistake. Camilla was quiet in the front passenger seat, her grey eyes glazed from, I assumed, weed. Next to me, Francis was the grimmest of all, his mouth set in a thin line and his head resting against the window in abject defeat.

In the backseat, Bunny and Charles shared swigs of something from a rumpled paper bag. They were the only ones who seemed to be in an approximation of good spirits. Liquor and weed seemed like the responsible choices. I should have shared a joint with Camilla or passed around a bottle with Charles and Bunny.

The drive went on for longer than I expected. At first, I thought it was due to a warped sense of time, but then a “Welcome To Maine” sign loomed in the darkness. It seemed excessive to go this far when we could have just driven twenty minutes to a suburb, to a tiny movie theater tucked between a _Little Wonders Books and Toys Shop_ and a make-your-own pottery place, where families would be tucked into bed at the time of a late evening screening and the hip Hampden student body wouldn’t be caught dead.

“Henry, Henry, where are we going?” I asked, leaning forward.

“To see _Cats,_ ” Henry said through gritted teeth.

“But we’re in the woods.”

“Don’t worry. This group knows their way around the woods,” Bunny chimed in. The muscles in Henry’s back clenched, tightening the fabric of his jacket. I could see the tension in his muscles through his clothes, the anger. I sat back, terrified of what he might do. I always forgot how big he was, how imposing he could be when he was angry and his spine was straight.

Camilla turned to me, concerned. “What did you take?”

“How do you know I took anything?” 

“Richard, come on, what did you take?” Charles asked conversationally.

“Acid.”

“Is this your first time?” 

“On acid? No.”

“No, seeing _Cats._ ” 

“Well...yeah.”

“Do you know anything about the show? Have you seen the trailer?” 

“I’ll be fine.”

“Oh, boy. This is gonna be fun,” Bunny said.

Henry said something in Greek that roughly translated to, “If Richard freaks out, we’re leaving.” 

Perhaps Henry didn’t expect Bunny to understand, but Bunny did, and, petulantly, he argued, “What? You’d drive all this way just to leave?”

“If you want to stay and finish it, by all means. But you’ll find your own ride back. You’re the one who insisted on seeing this thing.” 

“Yeah, but not in _Maine_ like we’re _fugitives—“_

“I’m not gonna freak out,” I said.

“Jesus Christ,” Henry muttered, and that was that.

* * *

  
  


Eventually, we turned into the parking lot of a shopping center, a piercing red MARSHALL’S sign as bright and illuminating as a beacon at sea. Hordes of teenagers drifted out of an Applebee’s, tipsy on mostly sugar. Nothing bad could happen outside an Applebee’s-Marshall’s-AMC Movie Theater. I knew it wasn’t true; plenty of murders had taken place in exactly these types of shopping centers, on exactly these kinds of nights. But we were on solid ground now. Whatever woods once existed here had long been paved for parking.

I was eager to unfold myself from the car. It felt good to be out of the cramped space, even if I knew that I’d be spending another two hours in a slightly-less-cramped movie theater. What I really wanted to do was run back towards the woods that had seemed so nefarious and foreboding earlier. My feet were on the verge of springing against the blacktop, back in the direction we’d come from, until Charles corralled me towards the theater. 

Henry paid for our tickets and growled “no” when the cashier asked if he’d like to become a Reward Member.

“Maybe next time,” Charles told her, flashing a charming smile.

We piled into seats, unspokenly arranging it so that I was at the end for a quick getaway if need be. Charles sat next to me, then Bunny, then Francis, Henry, and Camilla. They all seemed concerned that I would have a freak out straight out of an after school special, would fling myself out a window or bash myself against a keyhole, deluded that I was a bumblebee. They were being paranoid, of course. This terrible movie might not make for the most pleasant trip, but it wouldn’t be lethal.

The trailers transfixed me: bright, pastelly romances and even more musicals. I wanted to see all of them, then I instantly forgot each one. Finally, the warning came on: all cellphones must be silenced, which was fine for us. As a group, we mostly had fliphones, and we were just as likely to leave them behind as we were to bring them. After an apparent eternity, the movie began.

I jolted towards a rumble next to me. Bunny’s head dangled from his neck at a grotesque angle, hanging just above Francis’ shoulder like a precariously unhinged windowpane. He was conked out and snoring in cacophonous counterpoint to--I assumed it would still be called this even in the movie--the overture. He didn’t stir when the ambiguously cat-sized pillowcase was thrown to the ground, timed to the final swell of the music. I forced my head away from Bunny’s chillingly corpse-like repose and faced the screen.

“Are you blind when you’re born?” A cat person asked, looking directly at me. Was I? Was I blind now? I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them. The colors, mostly different greys and browns, smeared across the screen, but the hands lingered. Their fur-lined human-shaped bodies tapered off into undeniably human appendages: fingers tipped with flesh and nails, bare feet that arched between toes and heels. 

They continued to ask questions: _can you see in the dark? Dare you look at a king? Would you sit on his throne?_ I turned to Henry, but he was too far away.

I looked back at the cat people, their ever-warping sizes. How were they cats? _Were_ they cats? The sum of their parts—the aforementioned hands and feet but also their noses and their mouths and distinctly human teeth—should have added to something human _or_ feline but came up short of either. The audience began clapping to a rhythm that I didn’t know. Everyone around me, it seemed, knew something that I didn’t.

“Are you okay?” Charles asked, putting a light hand on my arm. I couldn’t say no.

“I don’t know the song,” I whispered.

“That’s okay. I don’t, either.”

I settled back in my seat. For a moment. Then I turned to Charles again. “How long has it been?” 

He proffered the paper bag in response.

I’d heard whisperings that _Cats_ was plotless or that whatever plot it did have was stupid, but it seemed very straightforward, summed up in a hypnotic lyric by the cat I’d decided was my friend and guide. One of the cats was to be reborn, selected as a great honor. It made sense to me. In fact, the explicitness grounded the story in clear reality. There were stakes. There were motivations. They craved death. 

Next to Charles, Bunny snorted awake, barked out a laugh at a chubby cat tumbling over and scratching her crotch, then promptly fell back asleep.

“How long has it been?” I asked Charles. This time, he pretended not to hear. I turned back to the screen. 

Once the initial shock of the cat-people wore off, I thought I could handle the movie. But then there were mice babies on the screen, in ribbons and bonnets, tap-dancing under threat of death. The audience groaned in good-natured disgust. My reaction was more potent.

“Oh my God,” I said, “oh my God. Oh my God.”

“It’s fine,” Charles said. I took a deep breath and nodded. _It’s fine._

Then the cat unzipped her skin. A strange psychical blip prevented my brain from registering the rest of the song. The cat had taken off her own skin solely to reveal more skin—identical skin—beneath it, in some sort of sparkly tap vest. Where had the zipper been? Could all the cats tear their skin off? And for what purpose? The questions came back: dare you look at a king? Would you sit on his throne? 

Charles kept asking, “Do you need to leave?” and all I could do was squeeze my eyes shut and shake my head. I had said I wouldn’t need to leave--I’d promised. I wouldn’t be responsible for the dissolution of the group, for leaving Bunny behind…

Finally, some familiar ground that I could cling to: a homeless singer cat singing a song I knew, though I didn’t know how I knew it, The other cats were very mean to her for vague reasons. I felt bad for her—was _I_ the homeless cat? Would that have been my destiny had I not been accepted into this group? Lurking around, cursed to search for belonging but being denied for reasons I would never know? 

Bunny awoke once more, during a particularly quiet and dull song, to elbow Charles in the side and ask “Hey, are those cats twins or do they fuck? Or both, d’you think?” Charles glared at him out of the corner of his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest.

“Is that _Judi Dench_?” Francis, Charles, and I blurted out at the same time. 

“Her _legs,_ ” I choked.

“It’s fine,” Charles repeated. I swiped at my eyes with the back of my arm.

“Is that _Ian McKellan_?” Francis, Charles, and, surprisingly, Henry blurted out.

“How long has it been?” I asked.

“Why don’t they just kill the Ian McKellan cat and then we can go,” Henry grumbled. “He’s clearly the most deserving.”

After watching him fuss and pine after the lithe white newcomer, I was pleased to see that my cat friend had a mate, a buff ginger tabby in red pants. They danced together in the second cat bacchanal and doted on Judi Dench, cat-like husbands doting on their mother/mother-in-law. The grey cat seemed particularly proud to sing the song of his lover, whose name was Skimbleshanks, the railway cat. 

The audience burst into cheers and applause. This time, I knew why: the two cats loved each other. It didn’t matter if they were half-human, half-cat, if they were simultaneously as large as trash cans and smaller than dinner knives, with wrists that could go through diamond rings. What mattered was they felt love.

“Now _this,”_ Francis said jovially, leaning over Bunny to talk to Charles (and, I assumed, me), “ _this_ is what it should be.”

The elation ended quickly. Skimbleshanks whip-whirled through the ceiling, and before I could register what happened, a quarter-moon descended, and a new cat appeared. The new cat seemed familiar--some singer that Judy hated but talked about nonstop.

What followed should have upset me more than it did: the cats were drugged and Judi Dench was kidnapped. The evil cat ripped off his fur coat to reveal a smooth velvety human body beneath it. But what upset me was a revelation, and the shame that the revelation took me so long to realize. 

“He doesn’t have a name,” I said, on the verge of tears. “The cat who’s telling everyone’s story, he said a cat’s name is the most important thing, but he doesn’t have one.“

Francis bent forward, looked at me past Charles and Bunny, and hissed, “ _It’s Munkustrap.”_

I shook my head. “No. No, that’s not a name.”

Francis rolled his eyes and sat back. “Fine, don’t believe me.” 

“How long has it been?” 

“It’s almost over,” Charles assured me, but he had no way of knowing, not with the erratic way time and shape and size were moving.

The homeless singer cat sang the same song for the fourth or fifteenth time, but she was louder and more snot propelled from her nose. She was selected to be the Jellicle choice, to which Henry loudly proclaimed, “Bullshit!” 

But at least the movie was over, or so we all thought. But then the Judi Dench cat turned towards the screen and looked at me.

All the other times the cats looked at me, I realized, they weren’t exactly looking _at_ me. They were looking in my general direction. But now the Judi Dench was looking _at_ me, making eye contact, and explaining to me what cats were.

“Look at Munkustrap,” Charles suggested, pointing to the far left side of the screen. I watched him watch Judi, bug-eyed, licking his lips and gaping his mouth at random.

It should have unnerved me, but he had guided me throughout the entire movie, and now he was protecting me from Judi Dench’s penetrating, judgmental gaze.

* * *

  
  


“Good job making it through,” Bunny said as we left the theater, clasping my shoulder. I flinched. I half-thought that we’d be beckoned back inside, the cat people calling to us in their nursery rhyme cadence, _It’s not over! It’s not over!_

But we made it to the car and no one stopped us. There was something oddly gratifying about it, although I doubted if anyone else would admit to feeling the same way.

“They murdered him. Massacred him,” Francis huffed.

“Who?”

“Mr. Mistoffelees. His song is supposed to be--joyous and celebratory. A spectacle of magic and dance. They made him...boring. And they ruined his whole song.” 

“How’s it supposed to go?” Chares asked.

With a considerably peppier tempo, Francis began, “‘And we all say oh! Well! Ah-never was there ever—‘“ but he noticed the wry amusement at his expense (and Henry’s tightened grip on the steering wheel) and, abashed, stopped.

“Which one was Mr. Mistoffelees?” Bunny asked.

“You slept through the whole damn movie,” Henry said. “See it again on your own time. I won’t sit through that trash again.”

“Oh, that’s fine. I saw it with Marion when it came out.”

I had a vision of Henry flooring the engine and shoving an unsuspecting Bunny out of the car, Bunny tumbling ungracefully onto the road, his neck twisting beneath his bulk. But it was just a paranoid vision, and it passed. 


End file.
